Seized Elton artwork not indecent

Good, now lets get on with the important things in life.

A photograph owned by Sir Elton John and seized from an art exhibition is not an indecent image, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has said.

2 minute explanation of string theory

This excellent video was the winning entry in a Discover magazine contest. It's another good example of how great user generated content can be.

Link

Society of Homeopaths Threaten Blogger

Considering it is normally the alternative practitioners who complain about being suppressed by mainstream science it is interesting to see that the Society of Homeopaths has threatened a bloggers ISP with legal action for defamation. The Society of Homeopaths have not said what they object to in the article which is well written and mostly deals with the more egregious claims of homeopaths such as its efficacy in treating Malaria.

Because of the legal threat the original article has been taken down, but as is the way of the internet, removing it has only made it multiply. The post is quoted in full below. There is more on this at DCScience

The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

The Society of Homeopaths (SoH) are a shambles and a bad joke. It is now over a year since Sense about Science, Simon Singh and the BBC Newsnight programme exposed how it is common practice for high street homeopaths to tell customers that their magic pills can prevent malaria. The Society of Homeopaths have done diddly-squat to stamp out this dangerous practice apart from issue a few ambiguously weasel-worded press statements.

The SoH has a code of practice, but my feeling is that this is just a smokescreen and is widely flouted and that the Society do not care about this. If this is true, then the code of practice is nothing more than a thin veneer used to give authority and credibility to its deluded members. It does nothing more than fool the public into thinking they are dealing with a regulated professional.

As a quick test, I picked a random homeopath with a web site from the SoH register to see if they flouted a couple of important rules:

48 • Advertising shall not contain claims of superiority.

• No advertising may be used which expressly or implicitly claims to cure named diseases.

72 To avoid making claims (whether explicit or implied; orally or in writing) implying cure of any named disease.

The homeopath I picked on is called Julia Wilson and runs a practice from the Leicestershire town of Market Harborough. What I found rather shocked and angered me.

Straight away, we find that Julia M Wilson LCHE, RSHom specialises in asthma and works at a clinic that says,

Many illnesses and disease can be successfully treated using homeopathy, including arthritis, asthma, digestive disorders, emotional and behavioural difficulties, headaches, infertility, skin and sleep problems.

Well, there are a number of named diseases there to start off. She also gives a leaflet that advertises her asthma clinic. The advertising leaflet says,

Conventional medicine is at a loss when it comes to understanding the origin of allergies. … The best that medical research can do is try to keep the symptoms under control. Homeopathy is different, it seeks to address the triggers for asthma and eczema. It is a safe, drug free approach that helps alleviate the flaring of skin and tightening of lungs…

Now, despite the usual homeopathic contradiction of claiming to treat causes not symptoms and then in the next breath saying it can alleviate symptoms, the advert is clearly in breach of the above rule 47 on advertising as it implicitly claims superiority over real medicine and names a disease.

Asthma is estimated to be responsible for 1,500 deaths and 74,000 emergency hospital admissions in the UK each year. It is not a trivial illness that sugar pills ought to be anywhere near. The Cochrane Review says the following about the evidence for asthma and homeopathy,

The review of trials found that the type of homeopathy varied between the studies, that the study designs used in the trials were varied and that no strong evidence existed that usual forms of homeopathy for asthma are effective.

This is not a surprise given that homeopathy is just a ritualised placebo. Hopefully, most parents attending this clinic will have the good sense to go to a real accident and emergency unit in the event of a severe attack and consult their GP about real management of the illness. I would hope that Julia does little harm here.

However, a little more research on her site reveals much more serious concerns. She says on her site that ’she worked in Kenya teaching homeopathy at a college in Nairobi and supporting graduates to set up their own clinics’. Now, we have seen what homeopaths do in Kenya before. It is not treating a little stress and the odd headache. Free from strong UK legislation, these missionary homeopaths make the boldest claims about the deadliest diseases.

A bit of web research shows where Julia was working (picture above). The Abha Light Foundation is a registered NGO in Kenya. It takes mobile homeopathy clinics through the slums of Nairobi and surrounding villages. Its stated aim is to,

introduce Homeopathy and natural medicines as a method of managing HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria in Kenya.

I must admit, I had to pause for breath after reading that. The clinic sells its own homeopathic remedies for ‘treating’ various lethal diseases. Its MalariaX potion,

is a homeopathic preparation for prevention of malaria and treatment of malaria. Suitable for children. For prevention. Only 1 pill each week before entering, during and after leaving malaria risk areas. For treatment. Take 1 pill every 1-3 hours during a malaria attack.

This is nothing short of being totally outrageous. It is a murderous delusion. David Colquhoun has been writing about this wicked scam recently and it is well worth following his blog on the issue.

Let’s remind ourselves what one of the most senior and respected homeopaths in the UK, Dr Peter Fisher of the London Homeopathic Hospital, has to say on this matter.

there is absolutely no reason to think that homeopathy works to prevent malaria and you won’t find that in any textbook or journal of homeopathy so people will get malaria, people may even die of malaria if they follow this advice.

Malaria is a huge killer in Kenya. It is the biggest killer of children under five. The problem is so huge that the reintroduction of DDT is considered as a proven way of reducing deaths. Magic sugar pills and water drops will do nothing. Many of the poorest in Kenya cannot afford real anti-malaria medicine, but offering them insane nonsense as a substitute will not help anyone.

Ironically, the WHO has issued a press release today on cheap ways of reducing child and adult mortality due to malaria. Their trials, conducted in Kenya, of using cheap mosquito nets soaked in insecticide have reduced child deaths by 44% over two years. It says that issuing these nets be the ‘immediate priority’ to governments with a malaria problem. No mention of homeopathy. These results were arrived at by careful trials and observation. Science. We now know that nets work. A lifesaving net costs $5. A bottle of useless homeopathic crap costs $4.50. Both are large amounts for a poor Kenyan, but is their life really worth the 50c saving?

I am sure we are going to hear the usual homeopath bleat that this is just a campaign by Big Pharma to discredit unpatentable homeopathic remedies. Are we to add to the conspiracy Big Net manufacturers too?

It amazes me that to add to all the list of ills and injustices that our rich nations impose on the poor of the world, we have to add the widespread export of our bourgeois and lethal healing fantasies. To make a strong point: if we can introduce laws that allow the arrest of sex tourists on their return to the UK, can we not charge people who travel to Africa to indulge their dangerous healing delusions?

At the very least, we could expect the Society of Homeopaths to try to stamp out this wicked practice? Could we?

the quackometer blog: The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing

LCD Soundsystem @ Brixton Academy

Thanks to Chris for the tickets!

Deer in Richmond Park

This is part of my daily commute and is part of what makes riding in London so special.

Is there such a thing as a good bluetooth headset?

I think I have owned four bluetooth headsets, from the very cheap to the expensive and not a single one of them has provided acceptable voice quality with skype and my macbook pro. I have even used a bluetooth 2.0 headset with the bluetooth 2.0 chipset in my macbook pro, still rubbish. I am not sure if its a skype issue or a bluetooth issue, but everytime I use skype I am forced to tether myself to the desk with a wired headset.

People on the other end of the call complain of cut outs, and static on the line. Bluetooth is possibly one of the most disappointing technologies of recent years. It's a hassle to set up and the speed/quality is surprisingly poor. About the only use I find for it at the moment is transferring small files between my Nokia N95 and MacBook pro, a job it actually accomplishes fairly well.

Don't even get me started on bluetooth mice, so laggy that they are just about unusable.

Good wireless skype headset anyone?

Moore at Kew

It scares me that I find this funny

Link

Dancing with Cats

Possibly the most insane thing I have ever seen. Steve was passing this book around the studio and I wondered whether they might just be a website, turns out there is..

Nijinskat follows his tail in a series of tight elevated turns and surging sissonnes. Cats respond well to visual images, and Arija uses thought pictures to help coordinate the dance. "While I'm dancing, I picture Nijinskat in a certain position, and then imagine that image floating into his head like a bubble. For some reason he responds best when I color the whole image blue."

Update: From the same website,Bird Art-The art of ornithological dejecta, I think they mean bird shit.

Update 2: Not sure it could be wackier but from the sponsored exhibitions page...

Cat Charmers: $145,000

Biomusicologist, David Parsons will undertake an another seven month expedition to Tibet in order to work with the monastic cat charmers of Chokpuri and Lhasa. Generally, he will become more fully conversant with all aspect of Tibetan cat charming and specifically, he will record the 1,786 fundamental frequency variants of the bird-block and kitten bells. Sponsored by LEAP! Food for Dancing Cats Inc.

Alley Art: $245,000

Art Critic, Burton Silver will undertake an expedition to investigate the aesthetics of territorial marks made by domestic cats living in alleys adjoining top restaurant kitchens in Venice, Florence, Rome and Paris. Sponsored by The Anabel Langbein Food Group Ltd.

Link

Foggy Ride This Morning

Google Maps has Street View for Portland.

Here's the house and the office.

Link

Randi calls out the woo of audiophiles

James Randi has challenged anyone to tell the difference between a pair of $7,800 speaker cables is any better than a pair of Monster audio cables. He has challenged Dave Clark, editor of the audio review publication Positive Feedback Online, and John Atkinson of Stereophile Magazine, both who gave glowing reviews of the insanely expensive Pear audio cables. I doubt either of them will accept.

The audiophile market is as rich in bullshot as the alternative medicine world and probably five times as expensive.

You can read the commentary here.

UC Berkeley has put its lectures online

This is fantastic. UC Berkeley has its own youtube channel and there are lots of great lectures including physics 101! Think I am going to have to dip back into my own education in this great science.

Link

rsizr - intelligent image scaling

Some time ago I wrote about seam carving, an improved method of resizing images whilst maintaining the content of the image. Now there is a web based tool created in Flash called rsizr. This tool allows you to use the seam carving, re targeting algorithm on your own images. Its a bit slow and I would love to have this as a desktop tool, which lots of people seem to be working on with no real result for OSX yet.

What I find particularly impressive is how quickly this resizing technique has gone from being a research paper to a useable web application. All too often you see a cool demonstration of a technology at a confernce and you have completely forgotten about it by the time you can actually get your hands on it.

A nice example of retargeting/image carving at work

Give it a go over at rsizr

Qawkward

Qakward - Definition: one who mistypes due to large fingers or onset symptoms of hangovers.

Check the since xxxx date on the bottle!?

Are machine translators really comedians?

Via Chris Saul's blog, this entry on the Olympic Prague contains some of the best machine translation I have ever read.

A how go in for Twentieth Century typical, capital you-break teeth among others on policy

Thanks , do you big propagator sport became a top marshal president Tomáše Garrigua Masaryka, go everything like after steel wool.

Link

The Backstroke of The West

Am oldie but a good one. Some fantastic screenshots of yet more language mangling this time in a pirated chinese version of revenge of the sith

http://www.dynamicdiscord.com/BrianStuff/Episode_3/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west.html

All that scrolling crap on TV

Two great clips from Lewis Black on all the clutter on TV screens these days. Sometimes I enjoy this information density, but not whilst watching a movie or series. It totally detracts from the drama carefully crafted by the actors and directors, by slapping a huge animated banner extolling the virtues of some totally unrelated show not starting for another 2 weeks.

"Your job is to tell stories, it's not to tell us in the middle of the story what show is coming on next or which one is premiering two weeks from now! What do you want me to do, stop and get a pencil and write it down? Do you want me to stop watching and prepare myself for the next show?"

FIshy Hell

Warren Ellis